Waterloo Wildfire forward Tara Gross holds off a Montreal Mission player during NRL action at RIM Park on Saturday.

Shorthanded Wildfire used to busy sked

By Jordan ErcitChronicle Staff

The pressure was on. With one half of the team’s goaltending tandem on the shelf, it was up to 19-year-old Waterloo Wildfire rookie Hailey Moore to shoulder the load last weekend during a four-game home stand against the National Ringette League’s Quebec contingent.

Four games and 28 hours later, which included 208 minutes played in net and 146 saves on 173 shots, Moore made it out alive with a couple of wins to boot.

“It was a lot of ice time and definitely a lot of shots,” said Moore, a Stittsville, Ont., native, who played 260 minutes combined before this NRL season as an affiliate for the Gloucester Devils.

“This was the first time being in that kind of situation, so I mostly tried to ignore (that she was the only goalie available.) But there were times before the games when I thought, ‘if I get injured, what are we going to do?’”

It is a good thing the second-year kinesiology major at McMaster University prepares for a heavy workload.

For the last two seasons, Moore has been balancing school reports and ringette rings while commuting between Hamilton and the Waterloo Region. Last year was even more hectic as she tried to manage increased ice time as a member of the Cambridge Turbos belle-AA team.

But the Ottawa West Ringette Association product has her secrets to success. To stay organized, Moore scribbles down her schedule on a white board every Sunday. When stress starts to bubble up, it is off to the gym for a workout.

“It can get a little overwhelming at times,” Moore said. “I do my best to get things done during the week when I have weekend games. When you’re playing on the weekend, even when you have time between games, it’s pretty hard to motivate yourself to do work when you’re so busy and tired from being on the ice.”

Moore is not the only one working overtime on the Wildfire (6-13-0-0).

With several returning players unable to play due to injury or work commitments, a lot of the scoring load has been hefted onto the top line of Bryanna Kelly, Lindsey Vivian and Tara Gross, who have combined for two-thirds of the team’s offensive production.

“It hasn’t been too bad because our games are pretty spread out,” said Kelly, a local supply teacher who notched seven goals and added four assists over the weekend against Montreal, Rive Sud, Lac St. Louis and Bourassa, and needs one more goal to crack 30 for a fifth straight season.

“Unless you have a four-game weekend, then it’s bad. But most of the time that’s not the case.”

Which makes last weekend’s results a small source of pride for the Wildfire, who dressed six affiliate players and picked up wins over the eighth-place Rive Sud Revolution and 10th-place Lac St. Louis Adrenaline — two teams sandwiching the ninth-place Wildfire in the race for the final Eastern Conference playoff spot.

The only regret is their 6-3 loss to 11th-place Le Royal de Bourassa in their final game of the weekend. A win over Bourassa would have vaulted the Wildfire past Rive Sud and into eighth place.

“This was big for us — the two wins we pulled off were probably the most important games for us,” Moore said. “We were hoping to get a win (against Bourassa) . . . but ones we had were clutch and happy to get out of those games for sure.”